Discovering Jesus within the One God

Israel’s Scriptures were crystal clear–the opening of Genesis, the books of Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and Daniel–there was only one God in and over the whole universe, and He was the good Creator God, Israel’s God, the God of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham, and so on.

This long and rich tradition of Jewish “Monotheism” persisted up through the time of Jesus Himself and on through the early Church. It provided the context within which, and in relation to which, the earliest Christians first formulated the doctrine of the “trinity”: one God in three persons.

One of the most explosive moments in this story of Jewish Monotheism is reflected in Paul’s first letter to Corinth (1 Cor. 8:6):

“But for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we to Him; And one LORD, Jesus Messiah, through whom are all things and we through Him.”

This verse is dense, beautiful, and even poetic. However, most who read it never realize what Paul’s doing. In this verse, Paul has reworked the standard Jewish prayer called the Shema. The Jewish Shema, which is recorded in Deuteronomy 6:4, had been prayed for centuries and was one of the Jewish tradition’s clearest statements of its belief in one God: “Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD alone is God.”

In this little prayer, the English word capitalized “LORD” is the Hebrew name for Israel’s God, “YHWH.” The word “God” is the Hebrew word “Elohim,” which simply means “God.”

What Paul has therefore done in 1 Corinthians 8:6 is to present the classic prayer of Jewish Monotheism, the most emphatic statement of YHWH as the one and only God in the universe, AND TO INCLUDE JESUS WITHIN IT.

By “God,” Paul refers to “the Father,” and by LORD, the name “YHWH.” Paul refers to “Jesus Messiah,” thereby reading Jesus as the proper referent of the very name of Israel’s God from the Old Testament. By so doing, Paul has done something extraordinary. He has not ADDED Jesus NEXT to God, as though Jesus were a second divine being essentially independent of “the Father.” Nor has Paul DISSOLVED Jesus INTO the one God, as though Jesus were not a distinct person.

Rather, we here stand at the beginnings of a rich trinitarian, communal view of the very nature of the one God. Jesus is INCLUDED WITHIN Paul’s prayer to the one God, who is now “Father, Son, and also Spirit.” By so doing, within no more than twenty-five years of his brutal death, Paul prays to Israel’s one God AND INCLUDES JESUS WITHIN, not alongside, that prayer. Jesus now stands at the very heart of the one true God.

But is this not the crucified Jesus to whom Paul is praying? Does Paul not know the scandal of what he’s doing? Is he really saying that at the heart of the true God of the universe lives the human being who was nailed to that tree?

Indeed!

There’s a cross at the heart of God; there’s a cross at the heart of the Universe…it hangs there, over the whole world, ever a sign of the God who loved us to the uttermost.

Come join us at Ooltewah United Methodist Church as we seek to know this loving God more and more!